Another Bitcoin Bubble Predicted by Vinny Lingham

The blockchain entrepreneur and CEO of Civic expressed his opinion on a possible Bitcoin bubble while speaking at a blockchain event in South Africa.

Civic Co-Founder Talks About the Industry

Vinny Lingham, the co-founder and CEO of Civic, a blockchain company focused on identity security and protection, has predicted another bubble for Bitcoin. He made this observation while speaking at a blockchain event in Johannesburg earlier this week.

The “Chain Reaction” event was organized by the Blockchain Entrepreneurs Club South Africa (BECSA). The speakers also included Monero lead maintainer Riccardo Spagni and the Luno country manager for South Africa, Marius Reitz.

Lingham spoke about the state of blockchain projects, hurdles to adoption, as well as the cryptocurrency market. Lingham, a South African internet entrepreneur, founded Civic in 2015. His previous venture, Gyft, was acquired by First Data Corporation in 2014 for over $50 million. In June 2017, Civic ran its ICO, raising over $33 million in funding.

Barriers to Mass Adoption

Lingham believes that scaling issues and lack of use cases are the reasons why blockchain technology is still very far from mass adoption.

He says:

Even though we are about a decade into blockchain technologies, we are still in the infancy. Primarily the number one use case for cryptocurrency outside of money transfers is trading. It’s mostly a speculation game.

He believes that as more use cases are built on the technology, the situation will gradually change. He also highlighted the need to address the scalability issue to match the throughput of traditional payment processors like Visa.

Throwing a jibe at the new generation of developers, Lingham observed that start-ups should be passionate about the projects they are building rather than the money they can raise. He noted:

You shouldn’t do this stuff for the money, you should do it because you’re passionate about what the goals of the project are.

Crypto Price Predictions

Talking about the cryptocurrency prices, Lingham believes that investor interest last year led to the market rally which, in turn, led to more start-ups hosting ICOs.

He said:

Last year, we saw an indicator of a massive amount of investor interest in the space and not enough supply. Right now you have way more supply of ICOs than buyers, and with the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies dropping, those buyers have less money to spend.

Predicting another Bitcoin bubble in the market, he said:

Do I think we’ll have another bubble? Probably, because people just don’t learn. Once it broke through $20k, it would run to over $100k and then we have the start of a new bubble-bust cycle.

He then added:

I have seen three or four bear markets and cycles. In bear markets, it is more about consolidating and going into high-quality coins like Bitcoin.

He concluded by commenting that it would have been better for Bitcoin price to grow steadily and for the technology to mature before attracting investors.